In this episode @heckerhut, @dirkjaeckel and @j32804 amongst other things discuss legal stuff in the universe of blockchains. Non of it can be considered legal advice. As an anonymous friend of mine put it: blockchain is a hot new cool thing for borderline legal shenanigans. Is it?
Some time passed after the DAO has goxed. We will need to mention it again, because it raised a lot of legal questions. What has happened since?
We also discuss crowdsales, smart contract which went bonkers (not the DAO one), reference to other podcasts touching on topics of law and regulations (see links below) and making predictions without regard to the possibility of danger involved in it. Here is a selection os links to articles and topics we have mentioned:
- White hat hacker team told off for moving salvaged ETC http://cointimes.tech/2016/08/12/etcdao-stolen-coins-frozen-by-exchanges-was-sent-by-ethereum-foundation-developers/ (by the way, I haven’t found the statement quoted in this article on the Ethereum Foundation announcement page)
- More about white hat group https://medium.com/@jackfru1t/the-robin-hood-group-and-etc-bdc6a0c111c3#.6d4b5wooa
- Dominic Williams about tokens and securities law https://medium.com/@dominic_w/on-protocol-tokens-and-securities-law-8e54d2237eee#.ll96uwj8n
- Sian Jones gave some regulatory update on Epicenter Bitcoin. EU regulations are not so restrictive towards fintech / virtual currency businesses? But what about crowdsales? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F-Z3rlOapk
- ESMA Discussion paper https://www.esma.europa.eu/sites/default/files/library/2016-773_dp_dlt.pdf not so fun to read, but important in the regulatory space
- Big ETC-ETH debate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj62bOedMVI&feature=youtu.be&t=4040
- Our guest Florian Glatz has also appeared on Epicentre defining a legal framework for DAOs https://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/125/ we tried not to repeat what was discussed on Epicentre and recommend that episode to anyone who is interested in law and decentralisation
- Some say smart poeple are little bit crazy, well, smart contracts can go totally nuts: GovernMental contract https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ghzhv/governmentals_1100_eth_jackpot_payout_is_stuck/?st=is7ctg5k&sh=46fc4c1b
Reads on Decentralised Autonomous Organisations selected by our guest Florian Glatz:
- Bitcoin as an unmanned company “Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics” https://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-and-the-three-laws-of-robotics
- Florian’s prediction from 2 years agohttps://medium.com/@heckerhut/smart-contracts-platforms-and-intermediaries-c3d30f5182a6#.7u91ss6hl
- A Legal Analysis of the DAO Exploit and Possible Investor Rights https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/a-legal-analysis-of-the-dao-exploit-and-possible-investor-rights-1466524659
- DAC (Decentralized Autonomous Corporations) revisited by Daniel Larimer https://letstalkbitcoin.com/dac-revisited
- DAOs, DACs, DAs and More: An Incomplete Terminology Guide by Vitalik Buterin (2014) https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/05/06/daos-dacs-das-and-more-an-incomplete-terminology-guide/
- Bootstrapping A Decentralized Autonomous Corporation: Part I by Vitalik Buterin (2013) https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bootstrapping-a-decentralized-autonomous-corporation-part-i-1379644274
Show notes from a previous unpublished (perhaps censored?) recording:
- Article by Coindesk “How to sue The DAO Hacker” (before TheDAO attack) http://www.coindesk.com/sue-dao-hacker/
- Pre TheDAO atteck article by Coindesk “How to sue a DAO” http://www.coindesk.com/how-to-sue-a-decentralized-autonomous-organization/
General legal issues related to blockchains:
- “Beyond Bitcoin: issues in Regulating Blockchain Transactions” – long, but a very basic, with explanation how blockchain is different from what we have seen before http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3827&context=dlj
We have also mentionned that it might be safer to use other than Turing complete languages for smart contracts, because Turing complete ones are inherently undecidable, which makes it impossible to know what a “smart contract” will do before running it.
- Towards safer languages for smart contracts by Jack Pettersson, Robert Edström presented at DEVCON1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2uwUdzVD9I
- Using dependent and polymorphic types for safer development of smart contracts (master thesis) http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/234939/234939.pdf
Other links:
- Concept of a-legality was explored by Hans Lindah in the field of philosophy of law http://www.hanslindahl.org/
- Plantoid – a robotic plant, an old concept recently connected to the blockchain by David Bovill http://plantoid.cc/view/welcome-visitors/view/plantoid Currently Primavera de Filippi is working on the implementation http://projects.stwst.at/stwst48/plantoid-by-primavera-de-filippi-david-bovill-vincent-roudaut-and-sara-renaud/
This year EU Parliament published some stuff on virtual currencies. They are usually little bit behind the curve – while people are discussing the DAOs they are getting their heads around bitcoin. But hopefully EU people will be catching up fast.
- EU Parliament report on Virtual Currencies http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A8-2016-0168+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
- There is also a possibility to attend public hearings at EU institutions and hear what they have to say about regulations and how these regulations are coming into existence http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/econ/events.html